Say What?

So at Joanna’s 4 year check up, she “pretty thoroughly failed her hearing screen.”  And now we know why.

This afternoon Joanna had an appointment with Dr. Clegg, an ENT in the area, who also happens to be the husband of Miss Cynthia, who I work in the nursery with sometimes and who teaches at SLC.  Cool, huh?

Joanna and I got to go ourselves since Matt knocked off a little early to take care of the little kids.  We saw an audiologist first.  Yours truly FORGOT HER CAMERA.  Sniff sniff, so this post will be wordier than usual, as I attempt to make up for the lack of pictures with my verbosity.  :)  Anyway, we sat in a chair in a booth while Joanna was tested.  It was fun!  First she put a little thing in each of Joanna’s ears that caused a line to draw on the computer (I know, my descriptions are so so technical).  It should be a cute little peaky line, but Joanna’s went straight across.  Whoops!  That indicates there is fluid in between the probey thing and the ear drum.  Then Joanna’s head was too small for the small headphones so she got little alien things stuck in her ears (which is of course the moment I realized my camera was at home on the charger).  Then the audiologist went into the other room to say words and play beeps into the earphones.  I could almost sort of hear what she said, but I could see when Joanna raised her hand (she was in my lap) and hear when she repeated the words.  I could tell she didn’t repeat them all.  Then the audiologist raved about how fantastic our Joanna is, and we went back into the waiting room to wait for Dr. Clegg’s nurse.

She called us back and we waited a few minutes for Dr. Clegg in the exam room.  He examined her ears, nose, and throat, asked questions, and then pulled out the test results to go over.  There was a post-it note on them from the audiologist that said (and I kid you not): “OMG, she is so good!!”  That does a momma’s heart proud, you know.  :)

So, the results, in my extreme layman’s terms: Joanna has fluid in her ears and it is causing hearing loss.  It’s mild to moderate in her right ear and just a little off in her left ear.  She is not hearing what her nerves are capable of.  It’s totally reversible; we just have to get the fluid out.  Dr. Clegg wants to first give it some time.  He can’t tell how long she’s had hearing loss, but it could have been just a month or so, since a cold or something caused the fluid build up.  Or it could have been a while.  Who knows.  He said four years old is when ear infections actually peak.  Joanna had one last week and is on the last day or so of amoxicillin.  Her fluid is not currently infected of course.  If she doesn’t have a bunch of infections, Dr. Clegg will give it a few months before he decides she needs tubes.  He’d hate for her to mess with that over the summer with swimming.  If she keeps getting infections though, I think he’ll do something sooner than later.  She goes back in a month for a reevaluation.   

We liked Dr. Clegg and all the staff.  And they had HGTV playing in the waiting room.  :)